February 20, 2018

INTRODUCTION. When you hear intervention, you think something’s wrong and needs to be fixed. For Robert Irwin, that something was art; it needed to be hacked. Beginning as an abstract artist, Irwin questioned painting and found it wanting. In one of those eureka moments by which something seems to come from nothing, but which makes sense in retrospect, he turned to the environment as both his medium and his Muse. Thus was his site-specific work...
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January 29, 2018

INTRODUCTION. There’s a rhythm to the show, a vibe. It stays with you long after you leave the Museum. Makes sense, doesn’t it? The Caribbean – you think of West Side Story and reggae, merengue and bachata, mambo and calypso. Makes you want to dance through the galleries or at least lilt as you read aloud the wall panels and labels. This rhythm carries you through the tropical installation, through the thematic groupings - Conceptual...
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January 23, 2018

What’s wrong with a little Disney fantasy if it lets a 6-year-old girl for a moment escape her ironically named slum motel, The Magic Castle? That’s the question answered in the last minute of Sean Baker’s magical The Florida Project, a film included in Art Dubai’s year-round film programming in partnership with Front Row Filmed Entertainment and screened at Roxy Cinemas at Dubai's City Walk. It’s the story of Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince), 6 years...
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January 20, 2018

It’s a domestic squabble with global implications. Though it deals with international intrigue, the tone is domestic and intimate. 1930, a distinguished physicist’s library, 25 miles outside London. A stolen formula for – gasp! – an atomic bomb. The murder of said physicist. Leads abound. An Italian doctor, a suspect because he’s foreign. The physicist’s son, low in self-esteem and desperate for cash. His wife’s up-to-now unknown connection with international espionage. The physicist’s personal secretary,...
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November 11, 2017

Without the context its title provides, Eric Baudelaire’s latest film, Also Known as Jihadi, now showing at Art Basel, would be the cinematic equivalent of a butt-dial; the difference being you accidentally turn on the video camera, not dial the phone. We see passages of what appear to be random, unrehearsed scenes (a nice metaphor for life, by the way). We hear ambient noise - the sound of voices and motor vehicles, but nothing by...
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August 22, 2016

In his Dadaist poem Anna Blume, Kurt Schwitters proclaims that the eponymous fraulein is the beloved of his 27 senses. Presumably he experiences her in ways we can only imagine. Sixth Sense, guest-curated by Djon Mundine for the National Art School Gallery, explores how cross-generational Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and non-Aboriginal artists perceive their world in ways that extend beyond the visual component of their otherwise visual art. Artists in the exhibition are Daniel Boyd,...
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July 24, 2016

Used to be, in pre-Wikipedia days, that comic books were an easy way to avoid having to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Three Musketeers or other too-long novels for high school essay assignments. Plot lines, character development, there they were, in abbreviated, legible, and graphic form. Now comics are a lot more political, social, and cultural. Case in point, Artists Assemble!: Empowerment and Inspiration In Contemporary Comics, curated by Esperanza Sánchez and...
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July 17, 2016

By their very nature, Biennials present a lot of moving pieces. Usually, they’re of the logistical sort. This year’s Qalandiya International (QI), also known as the Palestinian Biennial, doesn’t just have a lot of moving pieces, it’s also fraught by social and political turmoil. Rarely does a biennial’s past literally erupt into the present in such an immediate way. Given the region’s recent politically inclement climate, the QI’s continued existence is no mean feat. Perhaps...
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You might go to someone’s party and check out the host’s book or music collection. If you’re a little more curious, you might see what the hell’s up in their medicine cabinet. I’m talking pills - analgesics, soporifics, psychotropics. Don’t read the labels, examine the capsules’ designs. Little Mondrians and Van Doesburgs, some butterscotch yellow or lime green monochromes. Innocuous, not a little pretty, right, like really minimal, hand painted, Minimalist sculptures? Well, especially if...
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Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” directed by Phyllis B. Gitlin for the Long Beach Playhouse’s Mainstage Theatre, presents a compelling look at the choices an African-American family face at the dawn of the Civil Rights era. Set in Chicago, in a worn down, claustrophobic apartment, the production recounts the story of the Youngers, a poor family that’s about to receive a $10,000 windfall from a life insurance policy held on Walter’s (Derek Shaun’s)...
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For this exhibition, Katie Herzog, in conjunction with writer Andrew Choate, has created a series of encaustic diptychs that plays tug of war with words that refer to things and words that in themselves are things. They chose generic Angeleno signage, unbranded, without obvious references. For each sign, Choate fashioned a sort of linguistic, Lewis Carrol-like doppelganger, which Herzog then fabricated in encaustic. If these were done with a medium that was fluid and fast...
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If you can picture inmates not just temporarily running an asylum but enacting a politically inflammatory play within its walls, directed by no less a personage than the Marquis de Sade, then you can picture – and immensely enjoy - “Marat/Sade: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade,” written by Peter Weiss and directed by Andrew Vonderschmitt for...
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Clocking in at a tick under 22 minutes, the humorously offbeat That’s Opportunity Knocking, written and directed by Charles Pelletier, asks, What could go wrong in a simple home robbery? The answer is, tons. Acknowledging that everyone, robbers, robbees, an otherwise innocent - and heavily sedated roommate - have various motivations and desires, not to mention personality quirks, the film is more an analysis of the context of a robbery and less of the particulars...
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November 25, 2015

This essay is published in conjunction with Where Am I Today?, an upcoming exhibition at Offramp Gallery, Pasadena. One might think that a one-man show that brims with in-your-face self-portraits would smack of vanity, if not self-indulgence. Yes, it does. No, it doesn’t. 8.21.2015 Make It Go Away 2 Jayme Odgers’ self-portraits feel like an exercise in self-aggrandizement so, yes, there’s that aspect of vanity. Once their backstory (a staple of theatre; a staple of...
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October 29, 2015

You think Los Angeles and you think glam if not garish, all surface, no history, no foundation. Not only is there no there, there: folks laud this nothing as a something. It’s not unjustified, of course. It’s just that, in the hands of an artist like Victor Hugo Zayas, the Los Angeles cityscape offers more, much more. Paul Schimmel’s MOCA show Helter Skelter suggested a noir underbelly to the city. This exhibition displays its monumental...
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August 29, 2015

This essay will accompany an exhibition of the artist’s work next month at Arthea Gallery, Mannheim, Germany. Hermann Lederle’s “Adaptation,” 2015, is massive. Measuring five and a half feet by ten feet, this totemic monument doesn’t just envelop you, it anchors you to the ground. Reminiscent of partially open Levelor blinds, a network of dense and narrow vertical bands sweep across the canvas. There’s more weight at the center; this makes the surface quiver and...
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May 13, 2015

Serenade 2014 Christine Frerichs oil, acrylic, wax and Activated Carbon Paint on two canvases 72" x 88" Photo: Lee Thompson, courtesy Klowden Mann With “Serenade,” her second solo show at Klowden Mann, Christine Frerichs offers deeply felt analyses of landscapes. She works in oil, acrylic, and wax. Although their surfaces are gritty, as if they’ve been blasted with stucco, there’s serenity to each piece. This serenity comes from the works’ narrow color range and the...
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March 11, 2015

With photorealist and social acuity as well as a penchant for the melodramatic, John Valadez dissects Los Angeles’s Chicano experience. His work addresses issues of estrangement. He wants his work to go beyond reportage to embed allegories, noting: “These are stories that I don’t know where they are going to go… it’s all very mysterious.” His murals, for which he’s best known, are theatrical: vivid characterizations, large, detailed sets, and conflict born of alienation. This...
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March 07, 2015

Nasim Nasr has two new bodies of work. One is called Zaeefeh (The Wretchedness), 2015. Across her portraits of historical Persian shahs, the artist has inscribed Farsi quotes. These quotes include citations from Iranian poet’s Forough Farrokhzad’s, Another Birth, and from Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat’s influential story, The Blind Owl (1937). Both writers expressed dissatisfaction with their then-current regimes. Both writers’ work was banned in Iran. The Zaeefeh format is especially effective. The portraits look...
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Written and directed by Ryan McClary for the Garage Theatre, “Wet Hot American Summer...the play?” at first seems slapdash, listing, and awkward. Then it feels jejune, hormonal, and uberconfessional. All this makes sense, given that it’s a behind scenes look at a play that kids stage in a summer camp. Still, it works at first like weak beer. It’s enough to get you boisterous and loud (“I want you inside me“). But not enough to...
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March 03, 2015

One of the actors, citing her skills in the production’s playbill, says she’s a “things meshed together” artist. She acts, she sings, and she makes music. Throw in the making of art and that’s what Four Larks’ spectacular production of “The Temptation of Saint Antony” is, a meshed together multimedia phantasmagoria, aka junkyard opera. Created and directed by Four Larks (Mat Diafos Sweeney and Sebastian Peters-Lazaro), it’s adapted from Gustav Flaubert’s “La Tentation de St...
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March 01, 2015

Mostly well done, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, directed by Sean Gray for the Long Beach Playhouse Mainstage Theatre, recounts the story of Henry (Noah Wagner), a brilliant and celebrated playwright. Successful, highly regarded, he is to the articulation of words and integrity of ideas as another Henry, Henry Higgins, is to proper pronunciation and good grammar. Though he’s high-minded, he’s not high browed. He prefers pop to classical music. He does believe, though, in...
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January 18, 2015

In olden times, to commemorate a rite of passage, young people would gather in a public space in the company of chaperones to sing with and dance to music. The music was a confession, it was a catharsis. It told of crushes, first loves, and all manner of attendant, tempest in a teacup sorrows. Compared to now, the lyrics were innocent. Music was life’s soundtrack, its scrapbook. Years later you could hear a song on...
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January 13, 2015

As introduced here, Danielle Eubank recently completed an expedition to the Arctic Circle aboard the Antigua, a three-masted barquentine tall ship. She was one of 27 artists, scientists, and educators that sailed around the international territory of Svalbard, an arctic archipelago. She recorded what she saw, felt and experienced through painted sketches and photographs. This is a sneak peek at what Danielle brought back from the Arctic. Some of these images will be shown here....
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January 11, 2015

The Dream of Kings 2007 Bruce Richards Oil on linen 41" x 19 ½" Photo: courtesy Jack Rutberg Fine Arts If “Bruce Richards: Future/Past” is any judge, then this longtime LA artist and UC Irvine grad, who moved to New York in 2002, would have been a great history teacher. He’s knowledgeable and analytical, light-hearted and not a little ironic. He doesn’t rant and rave. He may be sober to the point of understatement but...
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December 29, 2014

Two shows at MOLAA. Each a precious gem. Each vivid and compelling. Each worthy of being savored again and again. Photographs courtesy of Mick Victor/COTU MEDIA “Transformations” represents a perfect use of a permanent collection. It also represents a perfect engagement of a museum with its community. Chosen from a pool of 50, five Long Beach residents worked with Carlos Ortega, MOLAA’s Curator of Collections. Each resident had undergone a life-altering crisis. They chose work...
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December 08, 2014

Admirality Arch 2014 50.75” x 61.75” mixed media on cardboard Photos courtesy of Tara Gallery. In 2009 Hossein Khosrojerdi and his family left Iran to seek political asylum in England. His interest in the country’s popular but politically dangerous green movement as well as shrinking opportunities for post-Revolution Iranian artists provided the impetus. “Redefining Home”, his current exhibition of paintings and digital media at Tara Gallery, is his first U.S. solo show. It maps his...
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December 07, 2014

“The Patron Saint of Sideshow,” a documentary filmed and directed by Mike Brown for the Found Theatre, is an enchanting Puff the Magic Dragon tale. It recounts the making of “One Tit Wonder,” Cynthia Galles’ sublimation of her breast cancer diagnosis into a theatre production that recasts cellular mischief into an homage to humor, high spirits, and resilience. Every aspect of the Found Theatre is a labor of love. So too is Mike Brown’s direction....
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December 02, 2014

They are the cutest couple imaginable. Both are elderly. That much you can tell from their white hair and the way the man stands slightly stooped, which makes him a bit shorter than the woman. They’re both dressed in bleh colors – browns, off greens – that go well with the pasty color of their faces. The lines of both bodies curve slightly upward to the left, as if they’re two pieces of an interlocking...
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November 23, 2014

Credibility begets anticipation. Having earned an imprimatur with their prior production of “The Lady of Shalott,” the verdict that awaited San Pedro Rep’s production of “Oedipus,” directed by David Mancini, was a foregone conclusion. The eyes have it. It’s not so much an enactment of a Sophocles play as a collaboration with the Greek playwright. The production is set in a contemporary lounge, an actual, drink-serving lounge. We’re citizens as well as audience. The setting,...
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November 07, 2014

There are two concurrent one-man shows at CES Contemporary. Stephen Eichhorn has a series of collages, “Arrangements.” Greg Stimac has a set of scanned photographs, “Along for the Ride.” Although their work comprises two separate shows, the two artists share a few interests. Both deal with found objects. Eichhorn harvests botanical images from books. Stimac scans photographs of bugs that smashed up against the Plexiglas panel he mounted on the front of his car during...
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October 18, 2014

The second Qalandiya International (Qi), also known as the Palestine Biennial, will take place from October 22 - November 15. It’s the largest contemporary art event in Palestine. Exhibitions and programs will be staged throughout the country. Sites include Jerusalem, Haifa, Ramallah, Gaza, and Hebron. It will feature the work of over 100 Palestinian and international artists. Each artist’s work will contribute to the theme “Archives, Lived and Shared.” Along with the exhibited art, QI...
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October 11, 2014

Vita brevis, arts longa. Perhaps no circumstance better reflects this now than the second edition of the Qalandiya International. Otherwise known as the Palestine Biennial, it will run from October 22 - November 15. Weathering the region’s tumultuous climate, this cultural celebration will occur in cities, towns, and villages throughout Palestine. It will feature over 100 artists and include a slate of educational programing. These events will take place at nine partner institutions. Each of...
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September 23, 2014

Liu Guangguang was born in China’s Gansu province. He attended Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art. He lives and works in Shenyang and Beijing. He’s a member of the Beijing-based EDGE Creative Collective. His recent work is about scale. His figures (and animals) go about their normal activity. They check their phones. They play cards. They get ready for bed. The people smile without a care in the world. Despite the normalcy of each image,...
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September 16, 2014

Someone once wrote that to look at a Renaissance painting was to look through a window. The picture frame did double duty as a window frame. The picture plane, the window’s glass, was assumed to be transparent. The subject of the painting was whatever could be seen through the window—presumably, a coherent point of view. Then along came Cubism, with its fractured space, kaleidoscopic forms, and simultaneous points of view. So that, eventually, art became...
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September 11, 2014

Photos courtesy of Lisa Adams and CB1 Gallery. Everything’s here. A modern art lexicon. Figuration. Audubon birds, the texture of tree trunks, the cotton candy wispiness of cumulus clouds. Things hover in an atmospheric space. Abstraction. Some rectangles are diaphanous. Some are opaque. They occlude land- and cityscapes like geometric smudges on a window. Irregular negative spaces blaze with blues, reds, and greens. They flatten the space and emphasize the picture plane. Gravity-compelled paint blobs...
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September 09, 2014

NeoMexicanism, curated by Edward Hayes Jr., Assistant Curator at the Museum of Latin American Art, is a bold show. It’s also a problematic one. While the work is interesting enough, it’s hard to embrace the exhibition as a whole with the same enthusiasm as with other recent MOLAA offerings. The exhibition focuses on work from the 80s to the present day. Artists include Monica Castillo, Julio Galan, and Nahum B. Zenil. For historical context, it...
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Joaquin Jara is versatile. Born in Barcelona, he studied art at La Llotja, in Barcelona, and the Camberwell College of Arts in London. He finished neither. Why should he? He knew precisely what he was doing. He works in many disciplines. He’s worked on movies. For the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, he contributed murals. He also worked on The Orphanage, Biutiful, Savage Grace, and Inside Silvia’s City. For these, he contributed portraits...
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September 02, 2014

Sarah A. Smith has a particular set of drawings that merit notice for their expressive qualities. Her subject is the natural world. The compositions are dynamic and fluid, coiled in mid-strike. If you didn’t know they were drawings, you might think they were dioramas. Subject matter includes eagles and wolves, trees and shrubs. Sometimes there’s a drawing of an eagle, sometimes there’s one of a wolf. Sometimes the two are locked in combat though, as...
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September 01, 2014

Bertil Petersson’s work is sculptural pantomime. It reminds you of the way in which Marcel Marceau nimbly threads his way head-on through a gale force wind. His pieces, some large, some smaller, defy gravity. Somehow they balance on corners and points without toppling over. They are lyrical and playful, always in motion, caught in a moment of accidental repose. Nothing is static. Large-scale, precarious, and durable origami…that’s what they are. They combine the idealism of...
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August 21, 2014

There, but not really. That’s the context for Barcelona-born artist Jaume Plensa’s public sculptures. They might seem like intrusions. They’re large. They’re set where people congregate. And the figures themselves are huge monumental heads. They sit in business districts and in front of an art museum. They emerge from the ocean. They hover above unsuspecting pedestrians. They rest in the neighborhood that surrounds the Venice Biennale. They’re placed in sites where they should be noticed....
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August 17, 2014

Recipient of a 2014-15 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Danielle Eubank paints bodies of water. She also paints water as if it were a body. The way light plays on its surface, the way it reveals its depths to show actual and emotional ripples, waves, and tides. All at once you see reflections of what’s above as well as things on and below the surface. She punctuates her surfaces with prismatic facets of color. Sometimes the surfaces...
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Recipient of a 2014-15 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Danielle Eubank paints bodies of water. She also paints water as if it were a body. The way light plays on its surface, the way it reveals its depths to show actual and emotional ripples, waves, and tides. All at once you see reflections of what’s above as well as things on and below the surface. She punctuates her surfaces with prismatic facets of color. Sometimes the surfaces...
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August 16, 2014

Richard Wagner thought a gesamtkunstwerk, an integration of all the arts, would be the purest form of theatre. “The Lady of Shalott: A Journey Beyond Arthurian Legend,” conceived and directed by Aaron Ganz for TE San Pedro Rep, grounds gesamtkunstwerk in unbelievable storytelling and enchanting spectacle. The result? A sensual and passionate example of the way art can come to life. To appreciate the extraordinary thing Ganz and his troupe have done here, consider the...
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August 14, 2014

Photos courtesy of the artist. With good reason, Roberto Fabelo is known as the Daumier of Cuba. His work is daring, bold, and not a little controversial. But it’s so well done that you praise its invention and execution more than you condemn any subversive content it might broach. “Fabelo’s Anatomy,” curated by Juan Delgado Calzadilla for the Museum of Latin American Art shows that he’s a Surrealist Da Vinci, as well. Talk about a...
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August 11, 2014

It’s a palpable wonder, the manual effort that Colorado artist Andrew Tirado puts into his sculptures. It’s no coincidence, either, that his subject is hands. He commemorates things that are man-made. He does so by showing the importance of craft. The further we go along in virtual realities, the less significant we find the hands. The human touch, that’s what he wants to preserve. He works with reclaimed redwood. He makes hands that hang from...
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August 10, 2014

It takes place in a small room. No windows, no mirrors, no way out. Uptown Estelle (Genevieve Simon) is attracted to Garcin (Anthony B. Cohen). Inez (Natalie Beisner) is attracted to Estelle. Garcin has other things on his mind so he rebuffs Estelle. The manipulative Inez tries to step into the breach of Estelle’s affections. Epic failure. Garcin warms up to Estelle and she warms up right back. This makes Inez furious. It goes on...
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August 03, 2014

When someone’s said to be quixotic, it’s meant that they’re too impractical and idealistic for their own good. Enter “Man of La Mancha, written by Dale Wasserman, with words and music by Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh. Directed by Drew Fitzsimmons for the San Pedro Theatre Club, this hugely entertaining production doesn’t confirm or deny the practicality of chivalry, courtesy, and civility, it celebrates the quest. It’s a complex tale, though you don’t notice it...
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